SARS-CoV-2 Virus Spreads in the Brain and Stays for Almost Eight Months (Representative)
Washington:
The SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads throughout the body, including the brain, and remains there for almost eight months, an analysis of tissue samples from autopsies of people who died due to COVID-19 shows.
Researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) tested samples from autopsies performed from April 2020 to March 2021. They conducted extensive sampling of the nervous system, including the brain, in 11 of the patients. All patients died of COVID-19, and none were vaccinated.
The blood plasma of 38 patients was positive for SARS-CoV-2, three were negative, and plasma was not available for the remaining three.
Thirty percent of the patients were women, and the average age was 62.5 years. Twenty-seven patients (61.4%) had three or more comorbidities.
The mean interval from onset of symptoms to death was 18.5 days.
The study, published in the journal Nature, showed that SARS-CoV-2 primarily infects and damages the respiratory tract and lung tissue.
However, the researchers found viral RNA in 84 different body sites and body fluids, and in one case they isolated viral RNA 230 days after the patient’s symptoms began.
They found SARS-CoV-2 RNA and protein in the hypothalamus and cerebellum of one patient and in the spinal cord and basal ganglia of two other patients.
However, the study found little damage to brain tissue, “despite a significant viral load.” The researchers also isolated viable SARS-CoV-2 virus from a variety of tissues in and outside the respiratory tract, including the brain, heart, lymph nodes, gastrointestinal tract, adrenal gland, and eye.
They isolated virus from 25 of 55 samples tested (45 percent).
“We demonstrated viral replication in multiple non-respiratory sites during the first two weeks after symptom onset,” the study authors note.
Before this study, “the thinking in the field was that SARS-CoV-2 was primarily a respiratory virus,” added senior study author Daniel Chertow of the NIH.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated channel.)
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